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Waitress Fired For Complaining About Tip On Facebook
22-year-old Ashley Johnson lost her job after she complained about a poor tip on Facebook. She felt the $5 tip from a couple who had sat in her section for 3 hours was a joke, and wrote about it on the social networking site. From the article: "Brixx officials told Johnson a couple of days later that she was being fired because she violated a company policy banning workers from speaking disparagingly about customers and casting the restaurant in a bad light on a social network." Silly Ashley, as everyone who has worked in a restaurant can tell you, complaining on Facebook isn't the answer. If you want to get back at bad customers you overcharge them, or put something in their food.
That is stupid enough to forget that they have people from work on their facebook and then gets fired over a post.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
People shouldn't think that Facebook is a special happy attention place where they can just whine without consequences and be told by their sycophantic friends that they are justified. If social networking needs anything, it's negative feedback for unpleasant behaviour. Back-slapping in echo chambers isn't good for society.
Boohoo. I was in a restaurant for a few hours recently, the waitress forgot our drink order twice (each time taking 15-20 minutes), gave our dinner order to another couple (incidently, it was a sushi place and the couple was ignorant to what they were eating), and then didn't bother to apologize or tell us we would be waiting (thirsty) for another 30 minutes. She was only waiting on 4 other tables. I made it a point to sit at the table till after she picked up the receipt so I could see her face when she looked at the $1 tip on a $90 check.
I was in good company so the wait didn't really bother me. But when the service is bad the tip is how you show it. People feel so entitled to getting money without doing the work to deserve it.
On the reverse side of the coin, when a waitress does well, I don't hesitate to leave 25%...
"There ought to be limits to freedom." -George W. Bush
One things that's cool about being in Japan is you don't have to tip. Of course, there's a downside. Even when a restaurant makes a mistake, you will *NEVER* get comped. This was about 10 years ago, but I was eating and a cockroach appeared on the table. No joke. The waitress was mortified and came over and immediately killed the roach and cleaned the table. I then had to pay full price for my meal. Hello? A roach shows up on the table and I still pay? They should have paid ME! Other than that, you don't have to tip here. Kinda nice.
That's one reason I like to eat out at fancier restaurants. Yes it costs more, but the wait service pays a lot more attention to you, the food is generally better, and god forbid if a mistake is made you'll be taken care of. For instance, in a local chain tex-mex place (and tex-mex is never THAT fancy), my girlfriend and I discovered a rubber band in our salsa. We didn't want to make a big deal out of it, and weren't all that grossed out (hey, I'd rather find that than hair). We just wanted a new bowl of salsa. Anyways, we discreetly motion to the waiter and whisper to him about the rubber band. He takes the evidence away and his manager returns. They went into the kitchen to try to figure out where the item came from, turns out it's the rubber bands that hold the stalks of cilantro together. He comes back, explains this to us, then immediately comps our entire check. We tried to talk him out of it (not that big of deal, we're not super squeamish or anything), but he wouldn't listen. We walked away very happy customers, and left like a $20 tip for dinner/drinks that would've been $50-$60. Another instance at an awesome, yet surprisingly cheap, steakhouse in Seattle (USDA Prime corn-fed beef from Nebraska, dry-aged for 28 days), a waitress walked by and dropped a cup of horseradish on the floor. A little bit of it landed on my shoulder but I didn't even notice. At some point later she saw this and offered my girlfriend and I a free round of drinks. It wasn't even that nice of shirt! Again, I told her it wasn't a big deal, but she did it anyways. I would go out more if my meals were cheaper, but I'd rather go out less and have a better experience.
> What's worse about the fast food places is the cashiers get the regular minimum wage while collecting tips.
This is because they can't charge you the alternate minimum wage *unless* the people getting tips get enough tips to bring them up to minimum wage. So when you only make $5 worth of tips on a good night, they can't take much out of your pay, because pay + tips has to exceed the normal minimum wage.
I say this as someone who once worked in such a place.
Are tips in USA mandatory? Is there a law or is it simply a very widely accepted thing? I do not see why:
1) I should give a waiter more money other than what he gets from his employer
2) If I must, why it has to be a linear function of the price of the food? The waiter does not make more effort if I choose the most expensive item on the list
3) Are tips taxed? If I must, at least I would like the state not to get part of that money